Forgive Forum for I have sinned!

[Titus A Duxass]

I have let my stock run down and have only a couple of pints of IPA left.

To make amends - this weekend I'm going to do:

A 5 Lt Tc with Aldi apple juice.

A Wilko Cheery wine kit (Christmas present)
Are there any tips on improving this?

A Muntons Gold Old English Bitter.
Again any tips for improving this kit would be appreciated.

Ranks
Sinner Titus

 

[ScottM]

How many litres is the wine kit? Do you add sugar or brew as it is?

If it's brewed as it is and it's a reasonably low volume of concentrate I would replace at least 5L of the water with grape juice. The kits, IMO, are very thin when made to volume so I always bulk them up with juice.

I would also ditch the finings, ditch the schedule and just brew/clear/mature at your own pace. Once fermented out dry, rack to a secondary, degas as much as you can and leave to clear. After a month as cool as possible rack into potassium sorbate & campden tablets. After a couple of days back sweeten the batch to taste and leave it for as long as you can (under airlock). Bottle after at least a month of maturing. Personally I would leave for at least 2.

 

[Titus A Duxass]

It's a 5 Lt kit that needs both water and sugar.
I've got some fruit sugar in the cupboard - can I use that?

 

[ScottM]

It's a 5 Lt kit that needs both water and sugar.
I've got some fruit sugar in the cupboard - can I use that?

I would just go with plain old white sugar.

How much sugar does it require? I would probably go with 10L of juice with that being the case, and subtract around 7L of the sugar volume from the sugar addition.

Ie if the recipe calls for 5kg of sugar and 15L of water, I would chuck out 10L of water in favour of 10L of grape juice (or maybe even a mix of cherry). If the juice has 170g of sugar per litre I would subtract 1190g(7*170) from the 7kg sugar addition to give 3.8kg of sugar to be added. Leaving in the other 3L worth of sugar will add a bit of volume and balance out the flavour a little.

It's all an experiment though and every kit will have its own variations :)